


blood in the meadowlark

by reconquer



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Hospitals, Pre-Canon, Suicide Attempt Aftermath, child abuse mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 16:12:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13103841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconquer/pseuds/reconquer
Summary: "What happened, Gansey?”“Ronan tried to kill himself.”The words fall out of his mouth before he can polish them. They lay on the floor of the Camaro, blunt and dull and flat.“Fuck.”





	blood in the meadowlark

**Author's Note:**

> i've been thinkin about this so here's a fic no one asked for. tw suicide attempt, hospitals, mention of panic attacks, child abuse
> 
> title is from a sufjan stevens song

Gansey’s fingers are numb. He wishes he’d thought to bring a sweater with him. He picks at the dirt under his nails, phone long dead, and stares at the TV that’s muted in the corner of the room. It’s playing a special about LeBron James.

Declan ducks in through the door looking pale and exhausted. Gansey glances up at him then back to his fingernails, too tired himself to keep up appearances.

“Matthew’s back at the dorm, sleeping,” Declan says as he lowers himself into the chair next to Gansey’s.

“He’s not going to school in the morning, is he?” Gansey asks. His voice sounds rough from disuse, and far away to his own ears.

Declan shakes his head. “One of us can go pick him up. He said he’ll text when he’s awake.”

“He’s going to be here that long?”

“The nurse said they have to keep him a while to make sure it doesn’t get infected,” Declan says. “Has he even woken up yet?”

Gansey just shakes his head. Ronan hasn’t done anything but lie in this hospital bed looking sallow and halfway dead.

Declan breathes out hard through his nose. He runs his hands through his hair, mussing up his curls even more. Gansey’s never seen him like this--even when Niall died, he was composed, glossy, thank-you-for-your-thoughts-and-prayers, all firm handshakes, first and foremost the eldest Lynch son. Now his hair, free from its usual product, is loosely curled and frizzy, and his hands have a fine tremor, and his eyes look flat and distant.

Gansey’s sure he looks the same. His glasses are smudged and when he went to the bathroom he had to rinse dried blood out of his bedhead.

“Did you ever find Noah?” Declan asks.

“No. He was pretty freaked, though, so I think I’ll just let him be for a while,” Gansey says.

“Well, when you find him, tell him thanks.” Declan doesn’t look at Gansey when he says this.

“Declan.”

“Just do it, Gansey.”

Gansey swallows down bile. “Fine.”

Declan sighs again, then stretches his legs and stands up. “I’m getting some coffee. You want?”

“Yes, thanks.”

Gansey goes back to staring blankly at the TV screen, which is now playing a segment about 9/11 jumpers. Fitting.

He feels far away from himself, from this hospital and this situation. There’s a ball of anxiety coiled impossibly tight in his chest and a lump in his throat he can’t seem to swallow. He’s considering letting it take over, if only because he’s in the ICU and they’d administer a sedative, when he hears rustling on the bed.

Gansey’s on his feet and clutching the guards of the hospital bed before his mind catches up. Ronan’s eyes are rolling behind his closed lids and his legs push weakly at the sheets. He’s making tiny noises of what Gansey can only assume are pain.

“Ronan,” Gansey says, trying to sound calm despite the tremor in his voice. “Ronan, wake up.”

Ronan makes another noise, throaty and low. He opens his eyelids, revealing the whites of his eyes before his irises roll down.

“Ronan,” Gansey repeats. Ronan rolls his eyes to his left, where Gansey’s standing, and his head lolls as it follows. His left hand immediately goes to his right, fingers brushing the bandages there, and his eyelids droop as his eyebrows furrow.

“Stop, stop, don’t touch it.” Gansey grabs at him, easily pulling his hand back to his side. He leaves his fingers loosely curled around Ronan’s elbow, careful of the dressings on that arm.

“Where’m I,” Ronan mumbles.

“We’re at the hospital, Ronan.”

Ronan’s eyes roll up towards the ceiling, seemingly more intentional this time. “Why.”

Gansey’s stomach flips. “You don’t remember?”

“Remember _what._ ” Ronan’s blinking at him, trying to focus on Gansey and failing. “What’ve they got me on. Fuck.”

“Painkillers. I don’t know what.”

“Mmf. I don’t.” Ronan’s blinking slows down along with his breathing.

“Ronan.” Gansey taps his bicep. “ _Ronan._ ”

Ronan’s fully asleep again before it even occurs to Gansey to get a nurse.

 

The first thing Gansey sees when Adam gets in the Pig is Adam’s eye. It’s swollen almost completely shut and dark purple in color, nearly black where the skin meets his nose. Gansey can’t see any other bruises, but he watches Adam wince and his wrist buckle when he puts his hand down to shift on the passenger seat. He’s wearing his school uniform. Adam catches Gansey looking and just shakes his head. _Don’t._

“What happened?” Adam asks. He fumbles with the lap belt, trying to keep his wrist limp while still gripping the buckle.

“Is your wrist broken?” Gansey peers over the center console, trying to see if he can catch any swelling or bruising underneath Adam’s sleeve.

“No. Just got bent the wrong way. What happened, Gansey?”

“Ronan tried to kill himself.”

The words fall out of his mouth before he can polish them. They lay on the floor of the Camaro, blunt and dull and flat.

“Fuck.” Adam’s voice is rough.

“It didn’t work.”

“Yeah. Obviously.”

The only sound between them is the growl of the Pig. It feels too alive. Gansey shuts the engine off.

Adam takes a few measured breaths and says, “How’d he do it?”

Gansey risks another look at him. The capillaries in his injured eye have burst, dying the white of his eye blood red.

“You sure you want to know?”

“Well, I’m gonna see him anyway, aren’t I?”

Gansey shrugs, conceding. “He slit his wrists.”

“ _Fuck._ ” Adam closes his eyes and lets his head thump against the headrest.

“Yeah.”

“What’d he do it with?”

Gansey fixes Adam with a look. Adam shrugs. “Morbid curiosity.”

“They couldn’t find a weapon.” Gansey smooths back his hair and blinks away some stickiness behind his contacts. “Something dull. His arms were all ragged. The edge of a bottle, maybe?”

“Jesus Christ.”

Gansey’s mouth is twisting uncomfortably and his back aches from slouching in the hospital chair all night. “Do you want me to drive you to school?”

“I can’t go to class looking like this,” Adam mutters. “Just bring me to the hospital.”

“You sure?”

“What, does he not want to see me or something?” Gansey watches a muscle tick in Adam’s jaw.

“No, nothing like that. He’s been in and out all night, though. Just.” Gansey swallows. “Are you sure you want to see it?”

“He’s my friend too, Gansey,” Adam says softly.

“Right. Of course.”

Gansey restarts the Camaro and watches the trailer park shrink in the rearview.

 

Ronan’s propped up and watching Matthew talk animatedly when Gansey and Adam walk in. He looks more alert than he had all night, and his dressings are freshly white, forearms resting palm-up on his lap. He doesn’t look over when they walk in.

Adam walks straight over to Ronan and rests two fingers on his shoulder, more gently than Gansey thought he was capable of. Ronan flinches away, hard, and Adam puts his hand in his pocket.

“Sorry.” His voice is soft and accented, and Gansey isn’t sure what the apology is for. Ronan keeps his eyes trained on his lap, but his Adam’s apple bobs.

“Where’s Declan?” Gansey asks.

“He’s getting me some fucking McDonald’s,” Ronan snarls. His lips curls when he says it, but his eyes stay trained down.

“There he is,” Adam mutters, breaking his stance to place his messenger bag on the ledge of the heater.

“We’re ordering a bunch of stuff, we figured you guys hadn’t had breakfast,” Matthew says. “Should be back any minute.”

“Thanks, Matthew,” Gansey answers at the same time Adam says, “I already ate.”

“It’s fucking _McDonald’s_ , Parrish,” Ronan says.

“And I’m not hungry,” Adam retorts.

“Anything new from the doctors?" Gansey interrupts. Based on the IV that’s still hooked into Ronan’s arm, he isn’t sure how riled up Ronan can get, but he doesn’t want to risk it.

“They’re keeping him in the ICU until tomorrow morning.” Declan comes from behind Gansey, the scent of greasy fried food emanating from the bag in his arms. “Then a seventy-two hour psych ward stay.”

“I am right fucking here, you know,” Ronan says loudly.

“Yes, and I’m your legal guardian who decides who's privy to your medical information,” Declan responds. He chucks a breakfast sandwich at Ronan, and it bounces off one of his arms and falls between his legs. Ronan hisses and recoils, head ducking between his knees.

Gansey, Adam, and Declan rush over to the bed and Matthew leaps to his feet, a second behind the rest of them.

“I am _so sorry,_ ” Declan blurts.

“Get out, Declan,” Ronan growls between clenched teeth.

“Ronan, I--”

“Get _out!_ ”

Declan pushes off the bed rail angrily and strides out of the room. Matthew shoots Gansey a worried look and skitters out after him.

“Let me see,” Adam says, tugging gently at Ronan’s visible fingers. Ronan uncurls a little and Gansey's stomach swoops when he sees red blooming underneath the dressings.

Gansey hadn’t seen the injuries, not really--when he’d called 911 Ronan’s arms were so slick with blood and the room was so dark that it’d been hard to tell exactly where it was all coming from. The nurses had kicked him out whenever they had to change Ronan’s dressings during the night, but he’d seen them in the trash before they’d taken it out, stained dark brown in different increments. Gansey doesn’t want to see what Ronan’s arms look like underneath.

“Fuck. _Fuck._ ” Ronan lets his forehead rest on his knees. “They just changed these. It fucking _hurts_ when they change these.”

“I’ll call a nurse,” Gansey says.

Gansey and Adam stand huddled next to the heater as the nurse replaces Ronan’s dressings, faces towards each other and eyes trained at the floor, trying to ignore Ronan’s staccato breaths.

“What happened to your face, Parrish?” Ronan asks when the nurse leaves. He picks up his sandwich, momentarily forgotten, from the side of the bed.

“Got caught trying to sneak out to help find you, Lynch,” Adam answers. Ronan freezes and Gansey winces.

“Adam--” Gansey starts, but Adam’s already shaking his head and glaring daggers at Ronan.

“No, he deserves to know, Gansey,” Adam says. His voice shakes. “That when he pulls shit like this, we worry and we go out to look for him, fuck the consequences.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Ronan says before Adam even finishes his sentence. Gansey and Adam blink at him. “It was an accident. I wasn’t trying to.” He swallows. “To kill myself. On purpose.”

“Oh, but if you died by accident, that’s fine, then,” Adam snaps back. “You’ve been self destructing for ages, it was only a matter of time. You were waiting for this to happen. You don’t care if--”

“Adam, that’s enough!” Gansey says forcefully, using a voice he tries not to use on Adam. Adam’s jaw clicks shut. Ronan’s red from the tips of his ears down to his throat.

“It won’t happen again.” Ronan’s voice is so low that Gansey barely catches it. “I promise.”

Adam scoffs a little, but lets it rest.

Ronan goes back to fumbling with the wrapping of the sandwich, and Gansey rushes over to the side of the bed to help him.

“Let me,” Gansey says, gently taking it from Ronan.

“I’m not an invalid, I can unwrap a sandwich,” Ronan mutters.

“They said you damaged your fine motor control in your left hand,” Gansey says, carefully folding the paper back.

“Good thing I jack off with my right one, then,” Ronan says with a smirk. Gansey rolls his eyes. Adam snorts.

 

Noah’s sitting on Gansey’s bed when he gets back to Monmouth. He’d dropped Adam off at the garage and he feels sticky and gross and in need of a shower. He’s steadfastly ignoring the mountain of texts he’s gotten from crew, asking everything between why he’d missed practice that morning to why him and both his friends were absent to hey, there’s a party at Chet’s tonight, there’s going to be local girls there, want to come?

Monmouth is filled with strong late afternoon fall light, forcing Noah into a stark silhouette of a boy. Gansey kicks off his Top-Siders and sits on the bed, letting Noah’s feet rest against his thigh.

“He’s okay, you know,” Gansey starts softly.

“I know,” Noah says. His head is still turned towards the big windows. Gansey can’t see what kind of face he’s making in this light.

“We can still go see him tonight, if you want to.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Noah,” Gansey says. It isn’t often Noah offers such a strong opinion, and Gansey doesn’t want to steamroll it, but. “Noah, seriously, he’s going to be fine. You found him in time.”

Noah just nods.

Gansey sighs.

“I’m going to take a shower.”

Noah nods again.

He’s gone when Gansey’s done.

 

Ronan’s three days at the psych ward drag.

Monmouth’s too quiet. Noah makes himself scarce and Adam’s booked himself solid for work, leaving Gansey to his own devices. He allows himself one panic attack a day, which is more in just one week than he’s had in months. He feels winded and worn out and itchy even when he’s not giving in to the pleasures of hyperventilation.

He goes to crew, he goes to school, and he goes home.

Gansey picks Ronan up from the hospital on the third day, Matthew in tow. Ronan hugs Matthew fiercely before climbing into the passenger seat of the Camaro and giving Gansey a fist bump.

“Nino’s?” Ronan asks. Gansey nods. They go.

**Author's Note:**

> hmu on tumblr @ sophelstien !


End file.
